Kaze no Uzu
by A238
Summary: Once every few centuries, someone is born with an affinity greater than all others. One of the five elements finds a home in a human, but no one knows why. When an unholy force is unleashed on October 10th, an element responds, and an embodiment of wind is made. Naruto isn't alone. He has the wind by his side. (Title: Whirlpool of Wind)
1. Prologue

The night was red.

Above the screaming and the tears of Konoha's people, a crimson shadow loomed: the Kyuubi no Youko in all its terrifying glory. Its immense form of bloody fur and swinging tails hung over all, a great beast of hatred and vile intent that made the stars quake in fear and the moonlight fade beneath its fury.

All that intent, all of that fearsome presence came to bear on a single man, a man atop a mountain: Namikaze Minato.

The Yondaime Hokage swept a hand through blond locks, tightened the hitai-ate around his forehead and grasped the infamous tri-tipped kunai in his palms as he stared the red-eyed beast down with resolute sapphire.

"You will not destroy Konoha."

Across the ragged stretches of his burning, broken village, the fox snarled, a low, haunting rumble echoing through the smoke and the ruin.

"You will not destroy Konoha."

The beast lifted its vast maw of jagged teeth to the sky and began to pull vast swathes of chakra in, nine tails rearing up behind it as an orb of dense energy formed above its head.

"You will not destroy Konoha."

The orb, glowing and expanding to titanic proportions, shrank into a single point, an impossible coruscating sphere. It descended into the waiting jaws of the monster below. Vicious, burning light emanated from within.

"YOU WILL NOT DESTROY KONOHA!"

The massive sphere ripped through the sky with the bellowing of thunder.

Minato's chakra flared.

A second away from annihilating the village in an unholy eruption of chakra, time and space _bent._ The orb, rotating in violent spirals of pure force, froze, caught between immense, explosive pressure and a hole punched in the fabric of reality.

Runes and symbols branched out onto nothingness, crawling along the surface of the air and the shimmering sphere itself and _dragged_, pulling it through with arms of coruscating blue.

The horizon, far behind the mountains and trees, trembled with waves of power beyond imagining. Chakra roared into the sky with a brutal surge. The heavens exploded with light.

The Kyuubi, enraged beyond measure, howled to the night broken by shards of blazing aurora. Sound stormed the air like a tempest's winds.

Then, it all became quiet. The vast, black echoes rolling through the dark stilled. The awe-inspiring inferno of chakra cascading down from above faded into the embrace of dusk. The storm of crashing sound settled into calm and steadfast zephyrs. Konoha crackled below.

Blood-red and brilliant blue witnessed a strange, disparate silence.

A drop of something tapped at the bridge of Minato's nose. Wind whistled by his ear. Grey swirls brushed at his eyes. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Then all hell broke loose.

Alien peace died with the crack of lightning. The wind's whistle became a wrathful bellow. Clouds circled above in savage precision. Rain poured from the heavens.

The Kyuubi growled.

Drenched to the bone in a matter of moments, Minato felt something through the grey sheets draped over his shoulders. A whisper nudged at his senses.

A cloak, a mask, and a hand appeared in the ashen rain.

A swirl of _something_ rippled in the fabric of reality around him.

The fight to save Konoha continued.

* * *

><p>It did not end the way he wanted.<p>

On a grassy plain held loosely by sparse, wet trees, Minato stood, barely. His legs, his arms and everything else in between shook. The slowing rain wrapped around them all. It fell smoothly through Kushina's soft red hair. It fell gently, peacefully, over Naruto's tuft of sleeping blond. It even fell over the Kyuubi's talon, marred with blood, forced through their bodies.

He felt it hold him up when his spirit could no longer.

A vision of death, the Shinigami itself, floated above, clutching his chakra, his soul. His earthly tether waned. To seal the Kyuubi within Naruto, he would be consumed.

It was a price he would gladly pay for his village, for his people, for his son. But it was not the way he wanted.

He wanted to hold his son and his wife in his arms, to pull them in tight and never let them go. He wanted to watch and smile as his son took his first steps, spoke his first words, won his first fight. He wanted to see all of those firsts with Kushina by his side, holding his hand and smiling just as proudly at their wonderful, beautiful child. He wanted to see him grow up, become a man, become a friend, a brother, a father to a family of his own. He wanted to spend his last days with the one who had been with him through all the blood and the tears and the war and the death. He wanted to pass away knowing he had done his part for Konoha, for Kakashi, Rin, Obito, Jiraiya, Hiruzen and Kushina.

And for Naruto.

The rain kept falling.

The chains of chakra Kushina had made rattled quietly, and the Kyuubi's claw twitched within him, but he felt no pain. It was all just drifting thoughts, memories of pain he felt instead. Those memories were secondary to the moment.

The spectral form in the cold grey air raised its ghostly knife.

Kushina's voice, strong and unfaltering, faded from his ears. Through the shudder that ran down her, he knew her tears had quickened.

Trembling, his hand found hers once more. Fingers folded over hers before they meshed together, entwined as they had been for the longest time. He could not feel it in his hand, but he felt it rumble in his heart.

"It'll be alright, my love," Minato whispered, struggling to find a voice. "It will be alright."

"I... I just..." Kushina murmured beneath the rain, "... we'll miss so much..."

He nodded his head, little movements up and down that she didn't see but he knew she felt. "I know."

"Naruto..." she reminded him.

It was his turn.

"Listen to her, Naruto," he smiled. "She knows what she's talking about."

Kushina uttered a quiet laugh. "Minato..."

"I know, I know," he nodded once more. "Naruto..."

He closed his eyes. "I hope... you can forgive us, Naruto... that you can forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. If there was more time... then, maybe... there would've been another way. I... I wasn't strong enough. But you will be. You will be strong enough, strong enough for all of this. All this coming calamity, all the pain of this world... you will be strong enough, strong enough to overcome it. I'm sure of it."

He opened his eyes, blue gazing out on a world of grey skies and clouds and rain that held his son in its damp embrace. Tears welled. "Be strong, Naruto. Be safe. Be happy."

One last bellow from the Kyuubi's jaw tore into the crying sky.

The phantom blade fell.

Chakra rushed around them all.

The Kyuubi was sealed.

On the damp, soft grass, Minato laid still, Kushina atop him, her breathing soft and steady and slowing. He could feel his body again, but feeling was fading. So too was his vision of a ceiling of grey.

How strange that nature recognised the disturbance, the sudden disaster that fell upon Konoha. The rain stifled the fires burning in the village. The winds cleared the skies of choking smoke and dust and ash. The lightning flashed in the distance when the people needed light in a time of darkness. But most of all, he had felt... _anger_.

There was rage in the rain and wrath upon the wind. It was as if nature itself had felt all the pain inflicted by the man in the mask on this night.

Cold began to seep into his skin, covering him from head to toe. Icy hands tugged at him gently, telling him it was time to go.

_Not yet._

Something... drifted down from the grey. There were... lines, streaks of something in the air that wafted down from above in gentle waves, water on the shore at day's end. It flowed, spiralled, circled overhead and down towards... Naruto.

The lines and streaks of a colour he could not see enveloped his son. Invisible arms encircled him, held him close. A minute swirl of wind took hold of him. The rain dampening the cloth wrapped around him lifted and slid. Within a second, he was dry. The rain did not fall on him anymore, but past him.

The wind kept him dry, warm. Safe.

_The wind will keep him. Always._

Minato's eyes moved slowly around. But there was no one nearby.

"Of course..." he whispered.

Quietly, Minato smiled as the hands of death pulled him away.

* * *

><p><em>Here's something of an intro to that idea I've been playing with.<em>

_Hope you guys like it._

_Thanks, A238_


	2. 1

"Hello, Kaze."

As he stood in a quiet place with expectant eyes, devoid of human noise and manmade things, he spoke, and then listened. A gentle flutter of wind swept through midnight leaves, and brown branches bent just a little in the ambient dark. Kaze was saying hello, in its own way.

A boy of six with blond hair and blue-grey eyes smiled. He had some news for his friend.

"I'm getting a place of my own, finally. I'm getting out of the orphanage."

A new breeze whistled across the grass, making little shimmering trails in the knee-high green blades.

The boy cocked his head to the side. "Why? Because I'm joining the Academy. The old man with the white hat told me I could."

Concern travelled along zephyrs above the trees, making the leaves right at the top dance up and down and back and forth.

He sighed and nodded. "I know it'll be different, and there'll be new people, but I... I still want to try."

Long, slow gusts dragged specks of dirt through the chilly air.

"If I don't try, then what do I do? I can't stay at the orphanage," he said.

The wind moved left through the low, rustling leaves, and then right through the treetops.

He sat down in the cool grass, folding his legs in the special way his friend had taught him to and placing his head in his hands. "They don't like me. No one there does."

The wavelength of the breeze shifted up and down across his clothing, placing invisible fingers atop his head and patting gently, up and down, side to side. Kaze was always nice to him.

Reassured a little, he kept talking. "But... people at the Academy might like me, even just a little."

The pats on his head subsided, and the wind became a slow running stream across the clearing.

"They might not like me, but I have to try and find out," he said, bringing his eyes up to the night sky.

A brief swirl in the unseeable stream in the clearing made itself known to him, spiky hair rustled with another calming pat on the head.

"It'll be hard," he admitted, looking back down to the grass and the shimmering flickers of moonlight running rampant in the partial dark. "It might hurt. It might hurt a lot."

Whirling, a breeze made his clothes shift and waver, his old green shirt moving loosely on his diminutive frame. He moved his thin, weedy arms close to his body, hugging them to his chest to no avail. He shivered just a little. The wind died down.

"You're right, Kaze," he agreed, nodding slowly, almost dejected. "It will hurt."

Kaze was right about so many things. Kaze knew so much that so many did not. It was sad that other people couldn't hear Kaze. Sometimes, he wanted to tell people the things that Kaze said to him. But then Kaze told him that they wouldn't understand, so he didn't say anything.

"It will hurt," he repeated, "but I'll live."

He could hear the approval in the whistle of wind that blew through the night-time grass. Kaze's support made him smile just a little.

He was going to be on his own more often, in a place that wasn't the orphanage. The orphanage was alive with small people full of hope, but dead with sad, stale air that hung around the old and taller caretakers. It was filled with a strange mix of aspiration and resignation. He was used to all that. And now, he was going somewhere else. The change was scary.

A sudden gust blew through the clearing, and trees shook with a moment of motion and noise. Little pieces of memory rose up inside him, times when that gust of wind had arrived. Kaze was reminding him.

It came when he needed help, when he felt frightened and alone, or when he was just hot and sweaty on a warm day as he sat in a tree and watched everything from a distance. Kaze was always there for him, even for the littlest things. When no one would hold his hand and show him the way through the fields, Kaze pushed the grass down and made a path for him. When people pointed at him, whispered to each other in hushed tones he couldn't help but hear, and made gestures with their hands that he didn't understand, Kaze grew loud and took the attention away from him. When the people stood and stared at him, made him uncomfortable and uneasy, made him afraid of what they might be thinking or about to do, Kaze made all the bad feelings go away when he felt the hand he couldn't see pat his head. And when he couldn't sleep late at night because of his uncomfortable bed near a wide-open window, Kaze would tell him stories to guide him off to sleep, stories about people who lived in a place full of sand and sun, where wind roamed freely across the dunes, and where people could hear the wind speak. He understood what Kaze was trying to tell him with memory, and he smiled again.

He had Kaze, and he would live with the change.

"You're my friend, Kaze," he said to his only one, looking up to the sky with his eyes closed. "You'll always be there for me."

And Kaze always was. As far back as his memory could stretch, the wind was always with him. It was always moving around him, encircling him in constant breeze, gentle but strong. It was always by his side, in the trees, in the grass, in the sky, in all of nature. Wherever he went, the wind followed him, walking by his side. Whenever he stopped, the wind stopped with him, standing at his back. When he laid on his back in the grass and reached his hand for the sky, wondering why he was always by himself, kept alone and away from all the others by cold glances from adults and upsetting taunts from children, the wind reached with him.

When the wind placed a hand on his head and rubbed gently, Naruto knew Kaze was smiling.

Naruto stood up. It was nearly morning, and his first day at the Academy was nearly upon him. At least he was ready.

* * *

><p><em>This was just an idea I was playing with.<em>

_It's still not fully developed, but I have a concept of where I want to take it. I currently don't have the time for it, however, so this might be left sitting here for a while._

_Hopefully you guys like it. And if you do, please check out my main fic, Magma through Leaves, on my profile for more of my work._

_Thanks,_

_A238_


	3. 2

_PROLOGUE added as of 23rd January 2015_

* * *

><p>Naruto wandered the halls alone, looking for just where he was supposed to be in an unfamiliar location. He would learn his way around eventually, he was sure, but he currently had no idea where his classroom was. And there wasn't anyone nearby to give him directions.<p>

It was weird. He hadn't seen anyone around, moving through the wooden hallways with some place to be and something to do. He was sure the Academy wasn't supposed to be so empty, inside or out. There hadn't been anyone to greet him when he walked in – not that he was particularly expecting it – and there hadn't been anyone outside the entrance to the building either.

Was he late or something?

_No, I can't be_, he reassured himself. The notifications he had been handed by the Hokage's secretary had specifically said that class began at nine in the morning. And there was still five minutes remaining before the hour ticked over, according to the clocks he had passed hanging above some of the wide windows spread throughout the confusing maze of wooden corridors filled with neutral colours, white and wood and grey and things.

But still, there wasn't anyone around, nor were the numbers on the nearby doors anywhere near close to one-zero-three.

"Kaze, where is everyone?" he asked his friend, standing still and looking up and down the hallway for a sign of anyone.

He didn't get all that much of an answer, just a slight change in the nearby air pressure from low to high that he felt it at the back of his neck more than anywhere else. Kaze didn't say much more than that there was someone coming.

"Hello?" a small voice called out from around a corner. "Is anyone there?"

Naruto stuck his head around the wall and raised his hand alongside it. "Yep, I'm here."

A girl, kind of small but with short pink hair and bright green eyes, cocked her head to the side, matching his movement around the wall. "You're kind of weird."

"That's kind of rude," Naruto smiled back.

"Are you Naruto?" she asked, ignoring his comment.

He kept on smiling. "That's me. What's your name?"

"I'm Sakura," she said quietly. "Iruka-sensei told me to go and look for you."

"Oh," he mumbled out. That was the name of the teacher of his class, or at least that was what the notification stuff said. Maybe he had misread some of it, but apparently the man's name had something to with dolphins. But what was a dolphin?

"Are you okay?"

Her small, kind of squeaky voice made him look up from his hands. "Huh? Oh, I'm fine."

She looked at him funny. "You were kind of mumbling something."

"I do that sometimes," he smiled again. "But didn't you say you were sent to look for me?"

"Yes," she nodded. "Follow me."

He stepped into full view from around the corner. Almost instantly, she tensed just a little, pausing in her step for a moment too long. He held a sigh back, not letting the tired rush of air leave his lungs and puff out into space. People knew who he was, not by name, but by appearance and description. His name and who he was as a person wasn't important to them. They knew who he was without really knowing who he was. He was something, not _someone_, to be aware of, and to be wary of.

It seemed that this girl, Sakura, was subject to that.

As her stride resumed, thin legs no longer quite as tense as her bright green eyes floated away from him like leaves on the breeze, Kaze tapped him on the shoulder. It was a little harder to hear, or feel, his friend indoors, but the message was clear enough: _it's alright._

He smiled slightly to himself. Sakura, turned away as she was, didn't see it.

She moved in the direction of a hallway lined with one-tens and one-twelves, and he quickly followed after her, trailing just a little behind and out of sight. Apparently, it made people feel a little more comfortable if they couldn't see him without purposefully looking. Kaze didn't tell him why, just that it did.

Turning down another wooden passageway marked by one-fives and one-fours, Naruto knew they were finally in the right place. At least he hadn't been that far off, only at one-fifteen. Well, maybe it had been a little far off. He would've asked Kaze to stop talking about his directional troubles, but then Sakura would've wondered why he was talking to someone she couldn't see.

After another moment of walking, they came to a sliding door with the markings 'one-zero-three' holding back a surprising amount of noise. He could hear a lot of different voices chatting away, making conversation. He could hear someone, most likely a man, shouting at them to be quiet.

Naruto shrugged to himself. It was the first day after all, and people his age didn't do quiet very well without learning it. The noise made sense.

Stopping outside the classroom, Sakura slid the door open and walked in. He followed in quickly. The noise, chattering of voices and the shouting demands of quiet and order in the classroom, stopped abruptly. People looked at him, blatantly staring. It was kind of uncomfortable.

"Are you Uzumaki Naruto?" a male voice brought his attention away from the successively raised rows of desks on his left to the space with the blackboard and the raised floor to his right, where a scarred man in blue wearing a green jacket and a ninja's headband waited with his arms crossed, a serious look on his face. He found it kind of funny how his expression made the scar running horizontally along his nose stretch into another mouth, but he didn't dare laugh or smile. This guy was his teacher, and he didn't want to piss him off. People tended to have short tempers and little tolerance around him.

"Yes," he nodded, with no smile and no humour.

The man looked him up and down with a bored eye. "Why are you late?"

"I'm late?" he asked.

"It's nine o'clock," he said flatly. "You were meant to be here at eight."

"Oh," Naruto murmured. So the notification stuff had been wrong. He should've expected something to be incorrect. People did that to him sometimes. Well, if he thought about it, it happened a lot of the time.

Iruka sighed heavily, shaking his head and clutching the bridge of his nose with a momentary scowl. "It doesn't matter. Go take a seat."

There was no introduction to the class. It was his first day, but it wasn't everyone else's. There didn't seem to be a need to know who he was. Hope faded just a little, dust scattering across the sky and wind and all that. He looked down and did what he was told.

Eyes glued to the floor he made his way to the inclined desks and seats across the floorboards, recently cleaned. Like the desks and the bench seats, the wooden floor would become dirty, worn, and perhaps sweaty. Work would be done above them, so what happened above would trickle down to the floor, to the bottom. It was like a waterfall, but being at the top, or the back, was not ideal. Out of sight, out of mind, he supposed.

A leg stuck out in front of him. He stopped mid-step, and paused long enough to look at the owner of the offending limb. It was a boy with messy brown hair, and red markings, like fangs, on both his cheeks the spread apart slightly as his smirk turned into a look of partial surprise.

A crawling whisper at the back of his neck told him the other boy was a part of a clan. People like him sometimes had markings that distinguished them from other people. Sometimes, it was on their faces for everyone to see up close and personal. Other times, it was on the back of their clothing, so people could see it from a distance as the clan member walked ahead of the others.

Naruto looked at him for a brief moment, tilting his head a little as he saw the initial surprise of failure fade into something like embarrassment, or maybe shame at his failing to trip him over and secure laughs from the relatively silent room. He wasn't sure which the truth was, but it hardly mattered. He shrugged his shoulders, palms to the sky hidden by high ceiling, and stepped over the outstretched leg and continued to the back.

A number of slow steps towards his destination later, and he slid into a spot in the back right corner. Once again, out of sight, out of mind. If they didn't see him, then they didn't have much reason to pay attention to him or look at him awkwardly or angrily or however else they could. It limited the array of emotional responses they could have to his presence, and he could have a little corner to himself. It was Kaze's corner as well, though.

With that in mind, he felt ready, prepared. It was new, possibly nerve-wracking, but he felt a measure of calm and clarity as the little fluctuations of air continued to tickle the back of his neck. With Kaze at his back, he would be fine.

Iruka slid the door shut and strode back over to the podium to resume the lesson. Right away, Naruto felt something was wrong. The feeling of wind at his neck vanished. So too did the feeling of calm.

"Kaze?" he whispered almost inaudibly.

There wasn't an answer, just a room full of people he didn't know. Some of them were still staring, still sending him wary and unsure glances, careful and watching, but he couldn't feel Kaze at his side. The sudden seclusion made him feel unsteady.

The lesson began anew, something to do with writing and language and symbols he wasn't quite sure of. He could write somewhat, though not very neatly. His reading ability was passable at best, but there was room for improvement. It was his first day, after all.

But he couldn't focus. The instability he felt wouldn't stop.

The lecturing and the writing continued, and he tried to follow along, but it began to slip by him. He sat in the back quietly, leaning forward to his desk, hands on his knees, fingers tapping with furious repetition. He looked around the room quickly, eyes darting left and right. Why was he so nervous?

It couldn't be the people around him, the other students in the room with him. Preoccupied with his own odd dilemma, he didn't have the mental vacancy to entertain thoughts of them. And he wouldn't until he stopped feeling so utterly enclosed.

The air was too still, too dusty and chalky for him. The flooding of daylight through the room didn't help him ignore the poor air quality at all. The lack of open doors and windows made him uneasy. He couldn't relax, he couldn't focus, and he couldn't tear his mind away from the fact that there was virtually no airflow in the room. It was all stagnant, inert, lacking motion. And it was stifling.

When Kaze wasn't by his side, at his back, anxiety ran rampant through his body. Without his friend, on-edge was all he was.

As loudly as he dared to breathe, Naruto drew in breath sharply, trying to summon up some contact with his absent friend through a strong exhalation. Kaze lived in the air, and even such a pitiful breeze was enough to allow him presence. The heated breath left him, an invisible plume of human-touched air billowing into space his friend would come to occupy. The air coiled around him for a brief moment, long enough to hear the comforting tone of Kaze's soundless voice: wind. After a moment, Kaze's flowing presence faded, and the unease faded just the same. But the moment of quiet reassurance was enough for him.

Despite his uncomfortable surroundings, he smiled to himself, nothing more than a momentary upwards quirk of his lips. But it was still a smile. He would be alright. Kaze said so, so it had to be true.

* * *

><p>When class finally ended for a relatively short lunch break – all of twenty minutes – Naruto was the first out the door. In the moment Iruka motioned for the students to exit, he was already halfway down the desks. The moment the noise of children released into the outside world and a vague measure of freedom, he was in the hallway outside, already headed straight for the nearest exit.<p>

At first, he was just walking briskly, enjoying the rising sensation of wind coiling around, embracing him. The improvement in the quality of air told him he was going in the right direction. Then he was jogging, moving with intent towards the cloud-strewn skies that he couldn't yet see but he knew were waiting for him. The air came alive with the scent of leaves and trees and bark and living things. And then, he was running, throwing himself into a sprint towards the outdoors like his life depended on it, letting the wind at his back carry him over wood and past windows and classrooms and people confused at the sight of a blond-haired blur whipping past them.

Bursting through a set of closed doors and slipping his way through a surprised throng of older students and other instructors gathering near the entrance, Naruto zipped away from it all and into the nearest tree in a sudden rush of wind. At last, he was outside, and he could breathe fully.

Kaze was by his side once more. He was no longer alone. Perhaps he never had been alone in the dusty, wooden confines of the Academy building, but it mattered little when he could feel the presence of his friend in the air all around him. He had his friend with him, so he smiled quietly from his spot in the branches.

Naruto looked down at the ground, some two or three metres below his dangling feet. From up high, it did seem quite a way away, his legs and feet and toes suddenly tiny compared to the tightly packed dirt below. But he wasn't afraid of heights. He didn't fear falling because Kaze would always catch him, either before he fell, or as he fell. He either landed safely on the ground, a cushion of air softening his steps, or he didn't fall at all, invisible hands holding him in place whenever he came close to losing his balance.

He couldn't help another smile. Kaze always took care of him like that.

Sitting in the branches, swinging his legs, feeling the wind, Naruto breathed in deeply, taking in the air and everything riding upon it. There was so much that moved on the wind and through the air. So much relied on the air to live and survive, to spread and feel. Plants, animals and people all needed it to breathe and grow, to keep on existing.

And there was him in the middle of all of it, sitting in the branches, swinging his legs, feeling the wind, breathing in deeply, and existing just the same as everything else. His odd treatment at the hands of others wouldn't stop that.

The others of his class began to filter out the front door, flowing into their pre-established groups and little cliques, chatting loudly, making animated movements with hands, gestures as they found spots to sit and stand, pulling food from bags and containers, unsheathing chopsticks from wherever they stored them and eating together.

Stomach grumbling just a little, he reached for his pack. And it wasn't on his back. _I must've left it back in the classroom_.

Naruto stepped out of the tree and landed without a noise, air scattering dust below his feet as he walked back to the entrance. A few noticeable glances were spared in his direction, eyes watching him slowly for a few seconds. One by one, they fell away, returning to other people and conversations and food.

He shook his head and kept walking, until a leg stopped him before the threshold.

Naruto looked to his right, blinking slowly. "Why?"

The boy with brown hair and the red clan markings on his face looked confused, standing up straight and scratching his head. "Why what?'

"Why'd you try to trip me over again?" Naruto completed the question. He thought what he was asking was quite obvious.

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I thought it'd be funny, because, you know, the first one didn't work. How'd you see it, anyway?"

The answer should've been just as obvious as his question. "I was looking down."

"Why?"

It was his turn to scratch his head. "Why what?"

"Why were you looking down?" the clan boy completed the question for him.

"I didn't see the point in looking up," Naruto said quietly.

He cocked his head to one side. "Why?"

Naruto gestured to the people outside behind him. "Take a look around. They don't exactly like me."

The boy glanced around. "Yeah, I've noticed. Why is that?"

Naruto shrugged. "Don't know. They just don't, I guess."

"So, you don't see the point in looking up?" the boy asked.

"When I'm around people, not really. The ground is more interesting sometimes," Naruto said, gaze shifting to the floor of the wooden entranceway.

The clan boy nodded. "Yeah, I get that. I find smells more interesting, anyway."

That was... unexpected. He didn't think anyone apart from Kaze would understand what he meant. People were interesting and all, but there was a lot more of the world than just them. He hadn't given his other senses much of a thought. He could imagine focusing on just smell was different altogether. And then there was hearing and touch and taste. There were entire worlds of sensation and understanding he hadn't even begun to tap into!

But that was beside the point. He understood, even just a little bit.

Naruto stuck out his hand in a motion he had seen a number of times before and gave a small smile. "Hi. I'm Uzumaki Naruto."

The brown-haired boy with the red marks on his cheeks looked down tentatively at the offered hand, but smiled back as he took it and gave a firm pump. "I'm Inuzuka Kiba. Nice to meet you."

* * *

><p><em>I've added a little more to this chapter since last time. It's not much, but it's still something. I've had a moment to write a bit more for this, so I'm glad it produced something worthwhile. Be on the lookout for more stuff on this in the next few days.<em>

_Until then, I suppose. If you're looking for more of my stuff to read, I'd encourage you to check my main fic, _Magma through Leaves_, if you have a spare moment. Thanks, guys_

_Waiting for the wind,_

_A238_


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